September songs

Taken by Rita Eberle-Wessner

Looking for just the right picture to start off my post, I checked out a favorite Flickr artist, Rita Eberle-Wessner. She took this one earlier this month, and I was simply mesmerized by its loveliness and downloaded it onto my Mac and then made it my display picture. It brings me peace just to look at it. I hope it does the same for you.

September has long been a hard month for me. My son Stephen died on September 17th, sixty years ago now. I am sometimes amazed that I am still here, still kicking up my heels at my advanced age, while so many I know and loved have been gone for what seems like forever.

I don't have any memories of my sweet baby any longer. I read somewhere that every time you access a memory, it changes, and after awhile it bears little resemblance to the original moment. I can believe that, but just picking up an infant and holding him for a minute seems to bring back some ancient recollections from my distant past. I know that my sister Norma Jean and I both experienced much of the same memories from our childhood, but now they have diverged so much that they feel like different events. I think I'll just let my memories rest and gather starlight.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf. —Rabindranath Tagore

'f'I woke this morning feeling "under the weather," as it refers to feeling sick. I have a little temperature (99°F) and my sinuses are burning, my energy is nonexistent, but I am not sneezing like I have a cold. I did get my new covid booster a week ago, felt pretty good until I went to bed last night. I think I'll stay home this morning instead of going out to breakfast with John. No need to expose anybody else to whatever I've come down with. I hope it's not the flu, since I haven't yet gotten my annual vaccination. Who knows? I guess I'll know soon enough. 

This morning I intended to recall some old memories of having been a mother, moments that still live in my heart. When I gave birth to my son Chris, I was barely nineteen and his father was twenty. We were such innocents! Chris is now gone, having died at forty of heart disease, and his brother Stephen was felled by spinal meningitis at the age of thirteen months. Chris was happily married, and his widow still texts me now and then. I don't usually respond, since it's still painful to recall those awful days. Grief never really completely leaves people; it just morphs into something less hurtful after many years have passed. Almost everybody my age has lost parents and sometimes other family members as well, but that is just what being mortal is all about. We will all one day lie down in our beds and will not get up again. Do you believe in the afterlife? I think I do, but I'm not completely sure it makes any sense. Probably it's nothing like we imagine, but I do believe that something of who we are continues. I know that there are nights when my loved ones visit me in my dreams, and they are as real to me as they ever were. Memory is a curious thing, all right. I think I'll just do as Tagore suggests, and dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

Interestingly, as I sit here pondering my post, I'm beginning to feel a little better. Nothing quite normal, but I do think that maybe I'll be able to start my day with my Tibetan exercises and sit in meditation, which are both constant companions when I arise out of bed, every morning for decades now. I'm such a creature of habit, but I don't know if it's such a good idea when feeling so under the weather. That usually means I am feeling a bit ill, unwell, poorly, or sick. My throat is slightly sore, nothing too bad, but I suspect that when I try to speak this morning, it will be with a croaky voice.

But into every life some rain must fall, and getting a littile sick is nothing too terrible, but it makes it hard to write about anything else, It's what my life is right now, although I have a sunny day ahead of me. Should I get out of bed and join the living? It's not easy to think of much else, so I think perhaps I'll stop here and spend some time gazing at that photo. Sorry I'm not my usual self today, but I can't pretend to be feeling perky. Nope. I'll be back next week, hopefully with  a smile and a better attitude.

(P.S. It's Covid all right.)